Vengeance
by Princess Pinky
Summary: Rumors are abound at Grant High School: did Ricky and Amy sleep together? Did Ben and Adrian sleep together? Sometimes vengeance can go too far.
1. As If I Had Been Poisoned

**A/N:** This story is based off SPOILERS from the upcoming second half of the season! I won't say which are spoilers and which is my own personal fan fiction spin, but just in case you do not want to be spoiled, do NOT read any further! You've been warned. Also, the title of this chapter comes from this quote by Charlotte Bront_**ë**_, "Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavor, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned."

_**Vengeance**_

**As If I Had Been Poisoned**

"You slept with _her_?!"

The shrieking voice was like a gunshot right next to his ear. Ben Boykewich slapped his hand up to block the foul noise. He slowly completed a half turn, coming face-to-face with Amy Juergens. "Amy-"

"I cannot believe you slept with that _slut!_"

Fire erupted deep in the pit of his stomach. "She's not a slut!" he lashed out without thinking. At that point, he noticed their argument was starting to draw attention. His face flushed pink as he grabbed Amy's arm and hauled her into the nearest empty classroom and slammed the door, causing the floating animal embryos to bobble in their science jars. "And it's not like it's any of your business anyway! We broke up months ago!"

"But you _slept_ with her, Ben!"

"And you slept with _Ricky!_" his eyes filled with venom as he said the other boy's name.

"Yeah, genius, how do you think I got pregnant?!"

"No!" Ben pointed an accusatory finger into her face. "You slept with him a second time! When Maria was here-"

Amy's mouth drew into a wide O. _"What?"_

"Don't act so innocent! Adrian and I both know the truth!"

"Ricky and I never slept together-"

"Yes you did! You did it to get revenge on me because you thought I had sex with Maria and it _never happened!_ And so…so Adrian and I slept together too." He folded his arms across his chest. "I guess we're even, now. You and I have both lost our virginity to the one person the other despises. And I guess that makes Adrian and Ricky equal too, because he cheated with and she cheated with me."

Amy's cheeks were slowly turning from a red plum to a purple plum. "I can't believe you!" she snarled. "We didn't sleep together! We…we _kissed!_ I asked him to kiss me."

The smugness dissipated from Ben's face. "What?"

"I asked him to kiss me. After my mom saw you kissing Maria on the beach…I asked him to kiss me and he did. But we never had sex. It was just a kiss."

Ben's eyes had become as wide black holes. "You're lying."

"You know I'm not." Her voice was shaky, like a car on a gravel road. While her face remained poker, her voice betrayed her true feelings. "I can't believe you would do this." Her voice had fallen to a whisper. "You of all people, Ben."

Ben swallowed uneasily. "And I can't believe you would do what you did either. You asked Ricky to kiss you while he was still with Adrian. You _knew_ he was with Adrian-"

"Don't try to make this my fault! I'm not the one who slept with anyone-"

"I didn't do anything wrong, Amy. I'm single. I didn't cheat on you. No matter what you think went down with Maria, I never meant to hurt you and I never had sex with her, oral or otherwise. You were the one who initiated this by asking _Adrian's boyfriend_ to kiss you, not me."

She raised her fist. "Go to hell, Ben!" Her eyes were glistening like the sea on a sunny day. "Stay away from me! Stay away from my sister, my parents, my son, and my son's father. You stay away from all of us! You and that slut deserve each other!" Her golden brown hair flew in a semi-circle around her head as she stormed out of the classroom, this time slamming the door so hard that one of the jarred elephant embryos fell off and shattered onto the floor.


	2. When I Think Of All My Wrongs

**A/N:** The title of this chapter comes from a quote by Sir Walter Scott, "Vengeance to God alone belongs; But, when I think of all my wrongs My blood is liquid flame!"

_**Vengeance**_

**When I Think Of All My Wrongs**

"Did you hear?"

Grace Bowman whipped around at the sound of the voice. It was Jeannie, a sandy haired girl who used to be a fellow cheerleader before Grace quit the squad. She used to hang on every word the girl told her, until last year, when she'd done a bit of growing up and realizing how naïve she'd been before. Now, she tried to just smile and nod when the gossip finally reached her. "Hear what?"

"You know! About Adrian Lee and that rich kid, Ben!"

Grace's face blanched. "Adrian and Ben?" Her ears perked up. She'd been looking for Adrian all day, but by lunch had finally come to the conclusion that she was either sick or ditching, because she hadn't warned her she'd be absent. "What about them?"

Jeannie's face turned an excited pink. "They _did it!_"

"What? Did what?"

"Sex! They had sex! Ben lost his virginity to her!"

Grace was shaking her head before she realized it. "That's impossible! She's with Ricky!"

"_Ricky!"_ Jeannie scoffed. Her green eyes rolled back in her head as she threw her wave of hair back to laugh. "We all knew _that_ would never last! Those two are such players! What surprises me is that she'd do that geeky Ben kid, of all people. I guess she was desperate. Or he was. Or both." She clutched her stomach and cackled again.

Grace's gray eyes simmered. "Don't talk about Adrian that way! She's not a slut!"

Jeannie snorted. "Don't get so touchy, Grace. I know you're _friends_ with her and all, but come on. She's been with like half the school. That's pretty slutty to me. I bet she's got a bunch of STD's too-"

Before she knew what she was doing, her hand was raised and she was smacking Jeannie across the side of her face. As the red hand print materialized with Jeannie's surprised shriek, Grace placed her offending hand to her lips in shock. "Jeannie-"

"What the hell is going on over here?!"

Jeannie shrieked again and pointed dramatically to Grace as the football coach made his way over to the girls. "She just hit me! For no reason!"

The Coach turned a pair of skeptical brown eyes to Grace. "Ms. Bowman?"

"Look!" Jeannie wailed, pointing to her enflamed left cheek.

Grace pursed her lips, knowing she'd been caught. "Adrian's _not_ a slut," she replied, glaring spitefully at the cheerleader.

"Come on, Miss Bowman." He placed his hand on Grace's shoulder. When they were out of earshot of Jeannie, who was by then surrounded by the rest of the squad, he glanced warily at Grace. "You of all people, Grace."

"People shouldn't gossip about things they know nothing about…and they shouldn't spread rumors either. It's mean. And hurtful. And frankly, she deserved to have a little reality check." She sighed. "I didn't mean to hurt her, I didn't even mean to hit her, it kind of just came out…although I know that doesn't make a difference."

"You're right, it doesn't." As they walked into the office, he pointed to a row of chairs. Two boys with scruffy clothes – one with a black eye and the other with a bloody nose – were already taking up two seats. Grace took a chair at the end of the row, two seats away from the kid with the black eye. She folded her hands and placed them patiently into her lap as the Coach disappeared into the principal's office.

_Well there's a first time for everything_, she thought in annoyance. A sick feeling slowly crept into the pit of her stomach. She knew her father was probably looking down on her right then and he was probably very unhappy with her. But on the other hand, this was just one of the changes she was going through since his death.

Slapping Jeannie and most likely suspension didn't seem nearly as terrible consequences as some of the other things that had happened to her as of late. Quite honestly, it just seemed par for the course, as her dad used to say.

As if on cue, one of her latest consequences came walking through the door carrying a stack of papers. He was tall, with doe-like brown eyes, and a charming grin. Her face flushed and she looked down at her lap, praying he wouldn't notice her.

"Grace?"

Grace lifted her eyes, hiding behind a wave of her angel blonde hair. "Jason?" she squeaked. "What are you doing here?"

He held up his stack of papers. "Dropping these off for Señora Catalina." His consternation grew. "What are _you_ doing here?"

Grace parted her lips to reply when the Coach poked his head out of the principal's office and waved to her. "Grace!"

Grace shot up like a weed. "Sorry, Jason…I have to go." She skirted past him and slid into the room. It was an odd sensation, being _relieved_ to be getting in trouble. But the truth was, Jason made her head spin. Not because she liked him – not that she didn't – but because of what they'd done over the summer. And because of what had happened between her and Jack afterwards.

Grace's mind buzzed as she seated herself in the chair in front of the principal. She could see their lips moving and vaguely heard sound bouncing off her eardrums, but she was lost in her mind. She was thinking of Adrian, thinking of Ben, thinking of Amy, thinking of Ricky, thinking of Jack, and of course thinking of Jason. The school year had barely begun when the mess with Ben and Maria had hit the gossip trail and soon, the news of Amy and Ben's breakup was on an Olympic dash around the halls, and all because Ben had been caught kissing Maria.

That was all it had taken to make Grace rethink keeping her secret from Jack. Seeing what it all had done to Ben and Amy's relationship – a couple that Grace found as romantic as a real life Romeo and Juliet – she had decided to come clean with her boyfriend and admit that she had kissed Jason during their summer at the Young Healers Program. Technically, he had kissed her really, but she hadn't fought him off, so it was no worse in her eyes.

"Are you listening? Ms. Bowman?"

Grace blinked her eyes and looked at the principal. She pinched her bottom lip between her teeth and mutely nodded. "I know what I did was wrong," she babbled, trying to pretend as if she had been paying attention. "And I'm sorry."

"We have a no tolerance policy for fights," the principal replied curtly. "Two days suspension."

"Two days?" the Coach barked, surprising both Grace and his superior. "It was a slap!"

"No tolerance-"

"She shouldn't get the same punishment as the kids who brawl, the offense wasn't nearly as severe."

"No tolerance means _no tolerance_. I will not show preferential treatment. I'm sorry, but my decision stands."

Grace rose like a prisoner, being carted off to the penitentiary for a life sentence. She couldn't help but smile a little at the Coach's defense of her actions. _Maybe he's not as hard as he seems._ She nodded as he opened the door for her in what she considered a gentlemanly fashion. Jason had done the same all summer. _Great_, she mentally growled, _now you're thinking about him again._ Her eyes scanned the office, but Jason was nowhere in sight, much to her happiness.

"Just take a seat," the Coach sighed, motioning to the spot she'd vacated earlier. "I'll call your mother to come pick you up."

"Thank you." She registered his odd look as she sat down and smiled politely as the boy with the black eye was ushered into the principal's office. With the secretary busy, the boy with the bloody nose busy with his head tilted back and eyes on the ceiling, and nobody else in sight, the ex-cheerleader slipped her hand into the pocket of her leather jacket and retrieved her cell phone. With two days of nothing to do, she was going to get to the bottom of this. Quickly, she punched in a text and pressed _Send_.


	3. I Drive In Yours

**A/N:** I know I had at least three more chapters of this written, but they seem to have either been deleted or misfiled somewhere, which is why it has taken so long to update this. Sorry about that. Also, a warning of strong language for this chapter! Anyway, chapter three's title comes from this quote, "All the old knives That have rusted in my back, I drive in yours," by Phaedrus.

_**Vengeance**_

**I Drive In Yours**

Her cell phone was beeping at her from its arm chair shaped cell phone holder on her dresser, but with her head buried under her white, orange, and hot pink checkered pillow she had no intention of getting up to see what it wanted.

_He slept with that goddamn bitch!_ Adrian's thoughts smoldered, putting the eruption of Pompeii to shame. She hated Amy Juergens! It was that fucking _whore's_ fault that Ricky wouldn't stay faithful to her. No matter how much she tried, he was under her thumb, all because she had control over the one thing Ricky would give his life for: "John."

"_He should've been here over an hour ago!" Adrian seethed as she paced back and forth in the living room. She checked her cell phone – which seemed super glued to her palm – for the fiftieth time. No new messages had come in since the last one, forty-five minutes ago, explaining that he had to stay late to clean up at the butcher shop._

_Her stomach rumbled as she stomped into the kitchen. Her mother was on a flight in Maine and her father was out of town, which had made tonight prime for the romantic dinner she wanted with her boyfriend. The table was set, clothed in an elegant maroon table cloth with lit white candles – which had each lost about an inch of wax while they burned for Ricky – and her grandmother's China had been laid out for two._

_As she crossed over to the refrigerator, something caught her eye. A familiar head of amazing brown hair through her kitchen window. "Ricky." She stopped, her breath baited as she slunk over to the window and stared across at the Juergens' household, where she saw her boyfriend and arch enemy caught in deep rooted conversation. "Fucking bitch!" she snarled, closing the blinds before either one could notice her watching. She discreetly peeked through them, wishing she could read lips. "What the hell is he doing? He should be over here! I fucking spent all afternoon setting up dinner and cooking for him and he's over there!"_

_Her knuckles were gradually turning white as she vented her frustrations to nothing but the cooling aroma of shrimp from her __Ceviche de Camarónes. Then to her astounding horror, she realized that Ricky was brushing Amy's hair from her face: a warming, seductive gesture. Her heart sped up. "No." her head shook in vain. "No!" As their lips met, she threw her fists against the window, screaming. Neither her boyfriend nor his son's mother looked up from their slow kiss. Instead, she saw Ricky's arms entwining around Amy's neck and hers mirroring the gesture around his._

_All Adrian could see was white. Blind rage. A number of variations of her fist colliding with The Other Woman's cheating lips ran through her head in a matter of split seconds. "That bitch accused Ben of cheating and broke up with him and now she's cheating with my fucking boyfriend!" She wanted to vomit. She wanted to die. She wanted to make Amy Juergens pay!_

_Flying across the kitchen, she swung her arm across the table. The crystal dish containing her Ceviche de Camarónes blew to the floor, shattering into a pile of glistening crystal and shrimp splinters. Adrian tried to imagine the curly pink pieces of fish were actually the pieces of Amy's face. Then she moved her hand, still holding her cell phone, to her face. With her thumb, she dialed Ben's number as she raged out of the kitchen, heading for the front door._

"_Adrian?" Ben's voice was tentative on the other end of the line._

"_What are you doing?" she demanded, her voice like a rabid dog's bark._

"_I…uh, nothing. Just finished my homework. I was watching a little T.V."_

"_I'll meet you at your house," she spoke as she climbed into her red convertible._

"_What?" Ben's voice instinctively replied. "I thought you and Ricky were-"_

"_Fuck Ricky!" she sneered._

"_What happened?" his voice turned soft as cotton; full of earnest understanding._

"_I'll explain when I get there."_

"_But-"_

"_I said I'll fucking explain when I fucking get there!" The motor of her convertible revved. Normally, it was a growling tiger that she relished, but tonight it only fueled her hatred. An image of her boyfriend screwing Amy in the backseat of his car found its way into her head as she disconnected her call and threw her cell phone into the passenger seat._

_For over a year, Ricky had used and abused Adrian by having sex with her to release his stress. To release his anger. To release his frustration. She had never minded the sex part. She loved having sex with Ricky. She loved being so close to him. She loved the way it – he – made her feel. But she couldn't take it anymore. "It's my turn to get comforted," she swore as she burned past Ricky's car with only one destination in mind._

Adrian sat up, throwing her pillow across the room as she did so. Her pulse was racing a bit faster as she grabbed her cell phone and checked the time. Ben would be going to lunch right about then. So would her _ex_-boyfriend. And the cheating whore. And…

"Grace." Her dark eyes finally scanned over the text. Her stomach churned. "How the hell does the school already know?!"


End file.
